Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage. I don’t think I’ve felt this confused about a novel since Combray. Truly, opening the book to two full pages of a spiderweb of characters was daunting, to say the least. It reminded me of the time I atte…
Posted in Blogs, Ferrante | Tagged with class, death, growth, language, relationships, women
Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage. I don’t think I’ve felt this confused about a novel since Combray. Truly, opening the book to two full pages of a spiderweb of characters was daunting, to say the least. It reminded me of the time I atte…
Posted in Blogs, Ferrante | Tagged with class, death, growth, language, relationships, women
I quickly realized why José Agualusa’s “The Book of Chameleons” was titled as such: many character’s take on different colours, changing based on their environments. Even the first-person narrator isn’t a chameleon, but a gecko. As stated in the lecture, the Portuguese original title means “The Seller of Pasts,” referencing the albino, Felix Ventura. The […]
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with death, Dreams, lying, memory, psychic
I have some mixed feelings about this one… some parts of the book I flew through because the action was so intense, and other parts I felt like I was dragging myself along trying to keep track of what was even happening.. I still thought the story was very interesting but there are so many … Continue reading pig
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with class, death, violence
In the dedication by the author (actually Clarice Lispector), she wrote: “And—and don’t forget that the structure of the atom cannot be seen but is nonetheless known.” This poetic sentence seems to demonstrate a theme of the book where the narrator attempts to capture the unseen and unexperienced. “And my duty, however artlessly, to reveal […]
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with class, death, poverty
I’m confused… I’m always confused but I think I’m genuinely lost this time… I think I enjoyed this one… again, I am confused so I’m not sure… I found the narration really interesting, but a bit hard to follow! I felt like I was sitting beside someone who just kept talking and talking and spiralling … Continue reading ??? star
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with death, gender
Now that I have finished this novel, I noticed that it starts with “all the world began with a yes” (3) and the last word is also “yes” (77). Overall, I thought this book was interesting in that the author also seems to be a character himself. He knows his goal for writing is to […]
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with class, death, life, money
THE WRITER: The desire for transcendence is itself a transcendent aspect of human nature, because it entails an already-present awareness of the transcendent, and a recognition of the possibility of becoming transcendent. The writer, Rodrigo, desires f…
Posted in Blogs, Lispector | Tagged with death, fiction, Home, identity, life, Lispecter, literature, love, reality, reflection, The hour of the star
War and poverty has sucked the life out of these people. Even Cintet “…said how sad he was that peaceful, happy people like us had gotten mixed up in a piece of history like that” (pg. 63). Even as Natalia goes about her life without the passionate revolutionary feelings that Quimet possesses, war impacts her […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with death, poverty, reality, war